Women and girls of all ages encouraged to join Marlborough Rugby Club's new Women's section

Last month Marlborough Rugby Club announced the launch of a Women’s section for the club, which will start at the beginning of the next season (2021-22).

The first stage of this is a consultation phase, where the Club are looking to gauge interest from prospective players in and around the Marlborough area.

Prior to Covid the club were involved in several initiatives to encourage girls to participate in rugby locally, including helping with the delivery of local school games rugby events for primary schools and also an after school girls rugby club at St Johns. The younger school games encouraged girls to play rugby in a mixed team for one term before competing in the local schools tournament, where MRFC helped with refereeing and some coaching. This was well attended by girls and there was clear demand for more girls rugby. Likewise the St John’s sessions were well attended and the players indicated they would like more opportunities to play.

Covid put a stop to these initial steps and the Club are aiming to re-establish both the St Johns club and work with the School Games.

Whilst rugby has always offered the opportunity for girls and boys to play mixed rugby at primary school age, they are not allowed to play together as they become older. Feedback from several girls also indicated that they would like to play with other girls but were not keen to join in a mixed contact side. Girls only football has been shown to be hugely successful nationwide (including in Marlborough where the ‘Angels’ teams at the Marlborough Youth Football Club are now well established and very successful) and girls only rugby is growing apace wherever it is trialled.

Marlborough Rugby Club are now trialling girls only touch / tag rugby (non-contact) for school years 5, 6 and 7 to gauge local interest and to start building momentum for the women and girls section locally.

Unlike most other team sports, Rugby is a game for all shapes and sizes and provides a role for everyone. It is unique in this respect; it is highly inclusive and does not require all athletes to be similar. By becoming part of this brand new rugby section, the Club want to provide girls with a wide range of other benefits associated with rugby. Coach Nick West-Oram listed some of what Rugby, as provided by Marlborough Rugby Club could offer girls wanting to play:

Meeting some great people and making some friends for life
Having fun
Becoming part of something – a team, a club, a family
Building confidence, self esteem and general health and wellbeing
Building transferable skills – problem solving, communication, Leadership etc
Learning all the basics about rugby principles, keys skills, how to play and improve your fitness at the same time.

He added that: “Whilst we know that Covid has massively affected young people, we hope this new initiative will play a part in providing the resilience and mental health improvements that are key to building girls to be ready for their future.”

Below is a poster produced by the Club to encourage girls to join: